The Collective Agreement Act allows employees and employers to engage in collective bargaining.
The Collective Agreement Act allows for collective bargaining among organized employees and their employers to determine an agreed upon set of working conditions. Often the bargaining is done by a labor union representative on behalf of the employees however that is not a requirement of the act.
History
The National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Collective Agreement Act was passed in 1935. The National Labor Relations Board was established prior to passage of the NLRA to investigate claims of unfair labor practices and allow workers to decide on union representation. Most importantly the collective agreement act prohibits retaliation by private sector employers against employees that form or join labor unions, engage in strikes, take part in collective bargaining.
Collective Bargaining
Collective bargaining refers to a negotiation that takes place between employer and employee in reference to work conditions and duties. A collective agreement is reached when both sides have voluntarily agreed to the terms. The Collective Agreement Act was enacted according to the National Labor Relations Board website "to encourage collective bargaining".
Features
Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act outlines the rights of employees and explicitly states collective bargaining as one of those rights. In addition the act gives employees the right to self-organize, to "form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively," as well as the right not to participate. Section 8 lays out what are unfair labor practices, the first of which is interfering or restraining employees from exercising the rights granted in Section 7.
Employers also may not "dominate or interfere with" the creation of a labor union or discourage membership in a labor organization. Part 5 of Section 8 makes it unfair labor practices to "refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees."
Types
The Collective Agreement Act allows employees and employers to participate in collective bargaining to settle disputes that may arise "out of differences to wages, hours, or other working conditions," according to Section 1. Benefits, safety issues, and promotions generally fall under the aforementioned 'other working conditions'. Additionally, the act allows employees to engage strikes and boycotts and other means of protest in support of their collective bargaining demands.
Exceptions
The collective agreement act only applies to employees and employers within the private sector. Section 2 of the NLRA describes which employees and employers are and are not bound by the legislation. Employers excluded from the NLRA include the United States government and any government corporations such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or "any Federal Reserve Bank", or any person subject to the Railway Labor Act.
The act also excludes employees in agricultural labor, domestic worker for a family or a family member, persons employed by spouses and relatives, independent contractors, supervisors and employers subject to the Railway Labor Act which regulates airline and railway industries.
Taft-Hartley Amendments
In 1947 the Taft-Hartley Act amended the National Labor Relations Act by adding a list of unfair labor practices that restricted employee actions. This amendment to the collective agreement act disallowed political strikes, solidarity strikes, strikes without union authorization, and secondary boycotts. Furthermore Taft-Hartley amendment made it illegal to require employers to hire only members of labor organizations. This amendment was designed to check the power and oversee the activities of labor unions.
